Studying for Azure Administrator Associate (AZ-104)

• AUTHORWill Osbourne
• PUBLISHED20 March 2026

I managed to pass the cert test for AZ-104 today, and I'll be honest it was not easy. There's nothing quite like watching every review video say "don't feel bad if you have to re-take it" or "this is one of the hardest cert tests" the night before the test. I won't lie I didn't go into the test with the highest confidence, but my preparation paid off, and now I've got the certification to show for it. It's been rewarding to flex my azure chops well past what I need day-to-day with my work, and having this extra knowledge will certainly help in how I architect solutions in the future.

Outside of lightly bragging (and mostly feeling extra closure from all the studying) I wanted to call out some what I think are great resources for preparing for this exam, along with what I did & would do differently if I were studying for this exam for the first time.

Resources

• This will come as no surprise to anyone, but Microsoft Learn obviously has extensive docs and a guided study plan for this cert. It can be found here, and while I did not read through it 100%, the skill checks per-module go deeper than the generalized practice exam, and were great to brush up on subjects that I felt less confident on.
• John Savill's AZ-104 Administrator Associate Study Cram video was actually where I started. I'm a big fan of starting with something like a cram or review video, because especially for broad, interconnected topics like Azure, I think having a high level understanding before getting into the nitty-gritty details is a huge boon.
• MeasureUp's practice tests & study material for AZ-104 were great. I found their practice tests were drastically more accurate to the way the questions in the cert test are delivered, compared to the Practice Exam offered by Microsoft.
• Finally, this is more of an output from my studying, but if you want a quick idea on how much is covered by the exam, I've posted my notes that I'd taken throughout the process in a gist.

What I would change

There's two major things that I'd change, one that's frankly pretty obvious, and another maybe less so. First off, the obvious one, I'd have done more hands on labs throughout the MS Learn material. I knew I should have been doing all of them, but the time commitment required to do them was more than I had wanted to do, but I feel that hands-on experience would have been helpful when it came to the exam, especially the case studies.

Secondly, I would have used MeasureUps resources earlier on. I didn't expect them to be so accurate to the experience of the exam, and I only paid for & took two of their practice tests the night before the exam, rather than getting their timeboxed study plan access. I really feel I'd have been way more prepared for how the questions are asked, and the depth / specificity of the questions. They're not paying me to say anything (obviously), I just really feel that their practice questions are that good.

What's up next?

I'll probably take a bit of time between my next cert, but I'm potentially looking towards pressing my luck harder and going for AZ-304 (Azure Solutions Architect Expert), or focusing down to a more niche area of Azure that's used in my day-to-day work. Just a heads up for those interested in certifications, there's a bit of churn with the previous set of certifications as MS starts rolling out new ones.

If you're looking to take AZ-104 and want to hear more about how it went for me, you can email me at [email protected], or find me on LinkedIn.